


there is something on your back

by thinkatory



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Horror, POV Second Person, Possession, Present Tense, referenced Hamlet/Ophelia - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2020-11-08 07:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20831438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/pseuds/thinkatory
Summary: O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.Hamlet AII, SII





	there is something on your back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marcelo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcelo/gifts).

> To the prompt "Hamlet as (more of) a horror story." I hope you enjoy this take, marcelo!

The men are afraid. Horatio is afraid. You fear nothing - at least, you choose not to.

Something stands in front of you. It is not your father. Your father is dead. This thing that wears his face cannot be what is left of the shining, majestic creature that was King Hamlet. There would be no justice in the world if even that fine example of man was brought this low, thin, and dreadful.

_Murder most foul,_ the thing breathes out desperately, its pale figure looming over you as you feel yourself sink, in your mind, your stomach, to your knees.

The weight of it overwhelms you. You once nearly drowned on the shores of England while a university student, so you know the feeling well, but on dry land, on the ramparts, you feel the air itself attempt to suffocate you.

It gasps. _O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!_

You cannot breathe.

Without moving, it seizes you around the shoulders.

_If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest._

It rings in your ears, through your soul. You barely hear the next, until the weight begins to subside and the thing before you begins to fade.

_Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me._

You bring yourself to your feet. Such a creature cannot be seen to bring a man such as you to your knees.

The weight does not fully fade as the creature did.

There is something on your back.

_Swear,_ it insists, in your father's voice.

Horatio does not hesitate. You do not hesitate.

You will do what needs to be done. You have no choice.

* * *

Something twists inside of you like a knife. At first you think it must be the knowledge that has wrapped itself around your heart, your soul, that the supposed man who calls himself king is a vile poisoner and murderer of his own kin, but it is far more than that.

At night, you feel the oppressive weight around your body, threatening to smother you against the soft bed beneath you. You wake after short hours of sleep to find your hand wrapped around the hilt of your sword, standing before your door as though prepared to do the deed.

The knowing eats away at you, the rage, that rage which twins with that thing within you, and it threatens to press you to your knees. There is no way to explain what is happening. You feel terribly alone.

Ophelia smiles and greets you as she passes. It is far more than a balm to your heart, be it briefly.

You write furiously, your face pink from the effort of remaining steady, and send the letter along to her. Then, the next day, another. The words come to you despite your ailment; you love her, and words of love come easily to the pen of those who mean it truly.

She does not come to you.

Rage burns in your breast, a rage that is not wholly your own, that might not be your own at all, and you know you still love her.

There is something on your back.

* * *

By the time the man who calls himself king has brought Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the castle, you have been enveloped by the fury that whispers in your mind. You do not recognize yourself in the mirror. Its hold is near absolute, even in your repose. Your dreams are full of the violence of war and a bloodthirsty, righteous furor from your sword that you have never felt.

Your words to your former university compatriots dance from your lips, giddy, proud, ridiculous. They are fools. They will never understand what has happened, even if you were to break your oath and tell them.

Denmark is a prison, but it is not your worse than your mind.

_O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams._

The thing that has set itself upon you begins to sink into your flesh. You are no longer you.

* * *

You are given a respite as the king plans behind his closed doors. You have enough wits about you to know what is being said. You have always been too clever.

Have you the courage to escape?

What will you become if you take your blade to your own breast? If murder has wrought the creature that lives within your flesh now, what would suicide make of you?

_To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause._

You might have wept were Ophelia not to happen past you.

You have little left within you to reason with, now. She is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, and the best thing you will ever ruin.

_God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad._

You have no choice; you flee before you can do worse.

* * *

The play's the thing.

You thrum with energy as you plan and speak and watch. This is what your uncle deserves. This is what your mother needs to see. This is the truth you know in your bones.

For the first time, as your vision nearly fades from rage at dear Ophelia, at blind Gertrude, you truly see what it is you do and what you have become.

It recognizes you as you recognize it. The thing that your father has become is becoming you.

You speak truly in the times your tongue is yours, and keep from weeping as befits your station. There is no time to mourn what it is you are losing when you must avenge what is lost. You swore your sword to revenge, and your father will have blood by your hand.

* * *

You stay your hand as the supposed king prays, though your father would have you run him through. Your eyes ache with tears of frustration holding back the urge to move forward and stab him in the back like a coward.

_There is time enough,_ you attempt to tell the creature.

It knows, but resents you, and digs its claws in deeper. You close your eyes tightly and withdraw.

* * *

Once your father loved your mother.

The fury that it sets upon your uncle has poisoned its mind as well as your own. You can only watch yourself as it unleashes that unholy anger upon what may well be an innocent woman who loves her child.

_Vile incest,_ the creature breathes inside of you.

You feel nausea rise as your hands grab at your mother and shove her forward.

_Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you._

You stab through the arras in a paranoid rage. You would like to blame the thing that lives within you for the death of Lord Polonius, but it was you. You are afraid, more than you ever have been. It will not let you turn the bloodied blade upon yourself, even if the oath did not bind you.

It takes hold and you weep inside yourself at the treatment it unleashes upon your mother.

_O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, if thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, to flaming youth let virtue be as wax, and melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame when the compulsive ardour gives the charge, since frost itself as actively doth burn and reason panders will._

It once loved her. It still does. You feel your father's presence for the first time, beyond the pale thing you saw all that time ago. He aches.

You flee once it loosens its hold upon you. The game has been complicated, but perhaps this will hasten things.

* * *

Your mood turns capricious when your supposed university friends come to you. You are lost. Even Ophelia might not bring you back to yourself, but she is lost to you as well.

_My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king._

_The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing-- _

_A thing, my lord!_

_Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after._

The murderer sends you to England. You smile.

You have nothing left to fear; you are exhausted of fear. You need only hasten this to its bloody end.

* * *

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern deserved to die. You feel no regret, no shame, in doing what needs must to return back home and end this once and for all.

It is like a march to war. The thing that was your father is well-pleased.

* * *

Horatio eases your mind. Whether or not he is the cause of your brief return to yourself, you cannot know, but you are given a brief respite once again, one that you cannot allow to turn to the obsessive regret at what you have been brought to do in the name of your oath.

It is all well and good to make light of death in the face of it, but it does nothing to change your inevitable end. Still, it makes your heavy heart lighten somewhat, though the talk remains morbid.

_Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away._

They come to the grave.

You are not prepared for the words that leave the mouth of Ophelia's dearest brother.

_my sister_

Your jibes were a lie to yourself. You have become as monstrous as the thing that appeared to you on the ramparts. You are rage embodied. You will have blood, senseless blood, to quench the thirst of your blade.

Laertes will die. Claudius will die.

What is left of you weeps for your love in some quiet part of your mind, abandoned to its suffering.

* * *

There is nothing left to fear besides what lies on the other side of death, but the creature has sunk into your flesh now, and its thoughts are your own, comforting for once.

_I will be with you, dear son, at the end of things._

You may well survive and end Claudius's wager, but you are prepared to die and join your father.

_Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?_

Horatio does not fully understand. That is what it is. He tries. He swore alongside you, did he not?

He is all you have of this world, now.

* * *

Laertes strikes at you; you strike at him; they part you, but the monster within you is ready to leave him bloody and ragged and joining his foolish father in death. You pant through the terrible anger and jibe as your father once did, distracted only by the swooning of the queen.

She gasps and bleeds.

_No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,-- the drink, the drink! I am poison'd._

You roar like the beast you are of treachery despite the severity of your wound, but Laertes swears the treachery is your own, before you turn the poisoned sword on the man who calls himself king.

_The point!--envenom'd too! Then, venom, to thy work._

The king dies before you. Something beautiful breaks inside of you, the righteous fury of the monster that was your father blossoming into something beyond sweet satisfaction to joy. You are left alone with what you have done, with those you have brought to the grave, including sweet Ophelia.

It is beyond anything you can handle at the moment, least of all with the wound bleeding down your side. You fall.

Horatio is alongside you as he has ever remained in your heart.

This you know: you must have him swear now so you will not come back to haunt him as you were haunted.

_If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story._

Your father will be there to greet you. You close your eyes.


End file.
